


Get It While It's Hot

by Kacka



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-25
Updated: 2016-04-25
Packaged: 2018-06-04 12:33:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6657856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kacka/pseuds/Kacka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clarke and the Blakes start having family dinners.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Get It While It's Hot

**Author's Note:**

> anyone else have trouble coming up with fic names?

“Did you order takeout without me?” Clarke calls, shedding her jacket and purse in a heap behind the door. Her apartment smells  _ heavenly _ , not least of all because she worked through lunch.

“Even better: in-home chef,” someone who is definitely not her roommate responds. Clarke would be worried if the voice wasn’t a familiar one, and sure enough, when she rounds the corner into the kitchen she sees Bellamy at the stove, wearing a Wonder Woman apron.

“As if helping her with her taxes isn’t enough,” she teases, peeking over his shoulder to see what he’s making. 

“You’re just jealous you had to figure them out on your own,” he says defensively. “I know I wish I had someone to show me the ropes when I was her age.” She bumps a hip against his to let him know she was kidding and swipes a piece of celery to munch on.

“But cooking for her? You know what they say, Bell: build someone a fire and they’ll be warm for a day; teach them how to build it–”

“And the next thing you know, I’ll be watching the six o’clock news only to find out my sister has set her apartment complex ablaze.”

“You watch the six o’clock news?”

“I like to be informed.”

“It probably lulls you to sleep at an age-appropriate bedtime. You know, like 8 p.m.”

“Why are you here?” He asks, but without malice. He looks, in fact, like he’s trying not to laugh, which Clarke counts as a victory.

“I live here.”

“No, why are you  _ here _ , in the kitchen, bugging me?”

Before she can answer her stomach gurgles loudly and unpleasantly, and Bellamy’s eyes drop to it, and then back to the stove. He’s definitely laughing now.

“I guess that answers that.”

“It smells so good in here,” Clarke moans, wrapping her arms around herself in an effort to get her digestive system to behave. “And I haven’t eaten since… Well, since yesterday.”

“What?” Bellamy blanches. “Why not?”

“I spent the better part of my midday trying to communicate with a client who has a very specific vision, yet is unable to articulate what that vision is.”

“What about breakfast?”

“What about it?”

“Most important meal of the day, Clarke.”

“Oh. I’m usually running too late to eat anything. Sometimes I’ll grab a banana, but–” She trails off at the look of utter horror on his face. 

“Fine. You can have some of what I’m making Octavia, but don’t get used to it,” he warns. “This is a special occasion, even for her.” Even as he speaks, he slides the bowl of chopped celery toward Clarke. She takes it with a grin. Good old Bellamy.

“Where  _ is _ my roommate?”

“I sent her to get milk. As previously mentioned, I don’t trust her with a stove.”

“I’m not sure she even knows how to work it,” Clarke muses, trying to remember if she’s seen Octavia cook anything other than frozen pizza and microwave dinners.

“Probably not,” Bellamy agrees. “But she’s been all stuffed up with allergies for the past couple of weeks and practically begged me to make Mom’s spicy chicken wings to– drain her system, so to speak.”

“Yeah, she’s been pretty miserable.”

“For someone who doesn’t cry for broken bones, she’s kind of a baby when she’s sick.”

“She’s also kind of a baby when it comes to spicy foods,” Clarke says, looking dubiously at the sauce.

“Hence the milk.” He turns his head to smirk at her. “You afraid of a little heat, Princess?”

“The hotter, the better.”

“Good. Then you stand here and stir this, and I’ll go check the meat.”

“You trust me with this?” His skin brushes against hers, warm and brief, as she steps closer to take the wooden spoon from him.

“I’m not going far. Just don’t let it burn. Or stick. Think you can handle that?”

“It seems doable. If I screw it up are you going to go all Gordon Ramsay and start insulting me? Because our walls are a little thin, and we will get noise complaints.”

“Like you’d just stand and take it,” he snorts. “I know better than to take my life in my hands like that. So tell me about this client who is apparently more important than food.”

It’s kind of fun, cooking with Bellamy. He’s at ease in the kitchen, not working from a recipe or using precise measurements, but one of those people who just seems to know how food balances, how things go together. His comfort in the space makes the tension in her shoulders start to unwind and she realizes it’s more about him than the prospect of a good meal. It also makes her realize how much she’s missed seeing him in a more casual environment. They’d become friends outside of their connection with Octavia when they’d lived in the same dorm in college, and it’s been a long while since they hung out anywhere besides a bar or a restaurant.

At some point Octavia gets home and the three of them put on the radio and settle around the table. Before too long, tears are streaming down Clarke’s face, both from laughter and the spice.

“Why don’t we do this more often?” She asks, navigating around Bellamy’s feet as she stretches her legs under the table.

“What, me cooking for you?”

“You like to take care of people; we like to eat. I don’t get to see you enough during the week. We should do this more.”

“Yeah, Bell. You’d be cooking anyway, and it’s not like most recipes make just one serving.”

“Like you’d know,” he teases, and Octavia kicks at him in retaliation, jostling Clarke’s legs. “What’s in it for me?”

“The pleasure of our sparkling personalities.”

“And we’d chip in for groceries,” Clarke adds.

“And you get to make sure I’m eating right.”

“Well, when you put it like that.”

Clarke isn’t convinced he doesn’t feel like he’s being used, so when he gets up to leave later she walks him to the door.

“If you don’t want to cook for us that’s fine,” she tells him. “But I meant it: I kind of miss you, you know?”

“I know,” he says softly. “I wouldn’t mind– I could do this more.”

“Good.” She smiles small, wary of breaking the moment with anything too bright or too loud. “Maybe between the two of us we can teach Octavia enough not to worry if she ever had to fend for herself.”

“Dream big, Princess.”

It becomes A Thing the three of them do a couple of times a month. Octavia dubs it Family Dinner, and before long it expands to include more of the family they’ve found for themselves. Monty and Jasper will invite themselves when they smell Bellamy’s cooking from their apartment down the hall. Lincoln, Miller, and Raven will join in from time to time, if they happen to be around on the right night. The only constants are Clarke and the Blakes, which she’s just fine with.

“Have you gone grocery shopping yet?”

“I’m headed there now.” She can hear him swearing at other drivers under his breath, presumably because he got stuck in rush hour traffic when he lost track of time after school let out. It wouldn’t be the first time.

“Good. Could we maybe change the plan?”

“Did we have a plan? I was going to wander the aisles and see what inspired me.”

“You and I operate very differently.”

“That’s not news. Did you have a request?”

“Not me. Wells just– He’s a little homesick since his dad had to cancel his visit last-minute, and I was thinking if we made his dad’s chili and cornbread it might help?”

“Sure,” Bellamy says without hesitation. 

There was a time when he and Wells hadn’t gotten along so well, Bellamy not quite as idealistic as Clarke’s childhood friend, not having quite as much faith in people to be their best. It makes her heart twist in a good way, that Bellamy would so easily allow Wells into Family Dinner.

“Do you have a recipe?” He asks.

“I’ll text it to you.”

“Sounds good. See you in about an hour, if this lane  _ ever _ moves.”

“Don’t let road rage win, Bellamy. Find your happy place.”

He misses a beat, and his voice sounds weird when he says, “I’m working on it.”

When Wells knocks, Clarke is trying to toss diced peppers into Bellamy’s mouth across the room and the smell of cornbread saturates the apartment.

“It’s open,” she calls, lining up her next shot. She doesn’t have great aim, but if she gets the distance right Bellamy can usually shift enough side-to-side to catch the throw. Wells rounds the corner just in time to see Clarke raise her arms in victory, Bellamy pumping a fist and smiling widely at her, carefree.

“Am I interrupting something?” Wells asks, amused as he leans against the doorframe.

“We’re just waiting for the cornbread to finish baking,” Bellamy says, reeling in his smile as he turns to face Wells. It’s not less genuine, but it’s as if he’s turned down the brightness a few watts. Clarke hates to watch that happen.

“Cornbread?”

“Yeah, we made chili,” Clarke says, aggressively casual. 

Wells isn’t fooled, his face softening, but all he says is, “Where’s Octavia?”

“She’s working tonight,” Clarke says, pulling out bowls from the cabinet. Bellamy reaches for them automatically, dishing out servings and passing them to Wells and Clarke, respectively. 

It’s like a dance, after they’ve cooked together so much; he knows when she’s got something covered, she can feel where he’ll step next. It’s nothing novel for her, but Wells raises a dark eyebrow at the fluidity of their motions.

“You guys go ahead and turn Jeopardy on,” Bellamy says, oblivious. “I’ll be in when the cornbread is done.”

“Wow, missing the first few clues,” Clarke smirks. On the rare nights when Octavia isn’t around to get annoyed about it, the two of them get overly competitive about the trivia show, even going so far some weeks as to keep their own scores. “That’s a real sacrifice.”

“Or maybe I’m just planning to take the edge pieces for myself,” he teases, nudging her toward the couch. “Really, go. I’ll be right there.”

“I’ll save you a seat.”

Wells is already situated on one end of the couch, and he gives her an unimpressed look when she takes the middle seat.

“What?”

“This is extremely cozy.”

“Since when do you and I worry about personal space?”

“No, not the couch. I’m talking about you and Bellamy being all domestic.”

Clarke bites her lip. Cozy is a good word for it. There’s a certain comfort, a certain intimacy when it’s just the two of them eating together. It’s like her world shrinks and expands to include whoever has shown up to family dinner. When it’s just Bellamy her world fits perfectly, like a second skin– warm and easy and completely natural.

“You remember in college, when you found out he was in your dorm?” Wells continues, when Clarke doesn’t respond.

“Yeah. We were better friends then than we ever have been,” Clarke says, thinking of all the times they’d study together in the lounge, or order pizzas and watch basketball on her tiny tv, or sneak into each other’s rooms at night to cover any and every surface with sticky notes and cups of water.

“That’s one way to remember it,” Wells snorts.

“What are you talking about?”

“You were pissed at first. You called me and went on a rant about how he was going to take all his controlling, big brother-ness out on Octavia, and on you by proximity, and how you weren’t going to stand for him to kill your buzz all the time–”

“I didn’t do that,” Clarke protests, thinking back. She can’t remember a time before Bellamy was this bright spot in her mind. She knows they butted heads spectacularly a couple of times, but in her memory she was fond of him, underneath it all. “Did I?”

“Yeah. You did,” Wells smirks. “Anyway, I didn’t hear a lot about him after that until about a month in? When your friend Jasper got alcohol poisoning and he stayed with you guys at the hospital until Jasper was released.”

Clarke remembers that night, how being in a hospital waiting room felt like home to her, how Octavia had fallen asleep on her shoulder, how Bellamy had passed his phone back and forth with Monty to play Solitaire and pass the time. She remembers being grateful that Bellamy was there, grateful that there was someone else who was in control despite their worry, to help take care of everyone else. She doesn’t remember if that was, at that point, par for the course of their friendship or not.

“This is a fun memory exercise,” she tells Wells. “But do you have a point?”

He shrugs and smirks infuriatingly.

“You guys work well together.”

She’s going to make him say more than that, she really is, but then Bellamy comes in with a plate of cornbread and settles next to her, his elbow flush against hers, and it feels  _ right _ to have him next to her like that. She can’t explain it, can’t put a finger on exactly what it is, but she thinks she might get what Wells is saying.

And once she notices, of course, it becomes a feeling she can’t shake. She wants to go back to her ignorance, back to the time before she was aware, but instead it follows her around. It rears its head whenever Octavia puts him in a headlock for cracking too many jokes at her expense, whenever he comes over with arms full of ingredients plus her favorite cereal because he noticed she was out, whenever she gets the urge to text him about a client with unrealistic expectations simply because she knows he’ll trash-talk with her. 

It’s not a passionate explosion like it was with Lexa. And she doesn’t feel like her head is in the clouds like she had with Finn. It’s easy as riding a current or falling into step with someone she walks with often. Maybe that’s why she hadn’t noticed, she thinks: because it unfolded so naturally.

“Do you and Lincoln have plans this weekend?” She asks Octavia one night.

“Not yet,” Octavia hums, gently untangling a knot from Clarke’s hair.

“Do you think you could make plans?”

Clarke is seated on the ground in front of her, having her hair braided, so she can’t see her roommate’s face but she does feel her hands still.

“Do you have a date?” It’s more of an accusation than a question.

“Not exactly,” Clarke hedges. “But I was thinking about making dinner for Bellamy.”

“A  _ romantic _ dinner?” 

Clarke has to turn around now, because Octavia’s words bite and Clarke isn’t sure what she’s thinking. As expected, Octavia’s jaw is set and her eyes narrowed, as if she’s trying to literally see through Clarke’s skull and into her mind.

“Yes,” Clarke answers, and Octavia’s face softens in relief.

“Then yeah, of course.” She places her hands on Clarke’s shoulders and twists her until she’s facing forward again. “I thought you were still being an idiot. Is Friday good for you?”

“Sure,” says Clarke softly, leaning back against her friend’s legs with a smile. “I can make that work.”

She can’t drum up the nerve to actually tell Bellamy it will just be the two of them. She doesn’t know how to explain it without launching into an actual confession of her feelings, and she kind of thinks that’s an in-person conversation to have.

She doesn’t hear him let himself in, but when she looks away from checking the lasagna in the oven, he’s standing in the doorway, hands in his pockets, smiling easily at her. 

Just in case she wasn’t sure before, her heart trips over itself just a little as it speeds up, and yeah. She should have seen it earlier.

“Hey.”

“Hey,” he says, coming in and reaching for the lid of the pot on the stove. “You started without me?”

“You snooze, you lose, gramps.”

“So you only ever wait for me because I’m the one who brings the food.”

“Basically,” she teases, passing him the wooden spoon so he can check the green beans. “That, and you’re usually the one who knows what we’re making.”

“He who does the grocery shopping controls the Family Dinner.”

“Something like that,” Clarke says absently, almost bursting at the seams. 

She didn’t exactly have a plan for how this evening was going to go, though she thought she’d at least be able to hold it in until food was on the table. But seeing him, the soft smile on his face, the boyish freckles that mask scars and gentle his hard lines, she doesn’t want to hold it in any longer. 

“Is it really Family Dinner without Octavia?” She asks, folding her hands behind her as she leans back against the cabinets.

Bellamy frowns.

“You’re family too–”

“No, that’s not what I mean. I was thinking we could start calling it Date Night.”

It doesn’t seem to register right away, but when it does she sees his eyes light up and the knot in her chest begins to loosen.

“Yeah?” He laughs, stepping closer so that he’s crowding her up against the counter. “I can get behind that.”

Clarke grins and tilts forward, letting gravity do most of the work as she tips against him. He moves to meet her at the same time. One of his hands comes to grip the back of her neck, his thumb tracing the line of her jaw, and it’s everything. It’s  _ Bellamy _ . 

“The food’s gonna burn,” she says, pulling back just far enough to get the words out before his mouth finds hers again.

“There will be other dinners,” he replies, pecking her on the nose before crossing to turn the oven off.

“There will be a  _ lot _ of other dinners” Clarke confirms, beaming and wrapping her arms around his neck. 

It’s not until later, when they’ve reheated their dinners and are sharing a bottle of wine on the same couch they’ve been making out on for the past couple of hours, that Bellamy starts and goes, “Oh, shit.”

“Not what you want to hear after the kind of night we’ve had,” Clarke says. She’s tucked under his arm and he hasn’t been able to stop touching her since he kissed her. She’s not worried.

“I just realized– I’ve basically been tricked into cooking for you for the rest of my life.”

“Yup.” Clarke hides her smile in his shoulder. “Pretty much. Good thing we work well together."

"Yeah." But he doesn't sound resigned; he sounds pleased. "Good thing."


End file.
